Seventh+Grade+Weekly

Teachers in attendance: Where are you on your long-range plans, pacing, and content standards? Please share minutes from your discussion. Be sure to include feedback on the levels of bloom’s being utilized in your classes/assessments each day. Comments ~ Concerns ~ Needs (resources)

POV 2/17/11 Smith, Yaman, Yarborough (Meetze in conference) We feel we are on target with our pacing guide. Currently we are all teaching indicator 7-5.3 on the world wide depression. Next week we will be moving on the rise of totalitarian governments leading to the start of World War II. We have coordinated with ELA teachers to work on some different novel studies and book passes on World War II. We will also plan lessons/activities on the Tuskegee Airman to integrate black-history into the study of World War II. We also discussed resources for the Great Depression and the World-Wide depression. There will not be a separate formal assessment for the Depression, but it will be covered in the test of World War II. 3/3/11  Meetze, Smith, Yaman, Yarborough   We are in World War II (standard 7-5.5) and right on track with our pacing guide. We discussed our benchmark test for March 28. The benchmark will be made up of PASS like questions to continue to get the students familiar with the langauage they will see on the PASS test in May. It will mainly focus on World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. We will be testing on these in the next 2 weeks. 3/10/11  Meetze, Smith, Yaman, Yarborough   We are all in World War II and starting the Holocaust (standard 7-5.5 and 7-5.6) and on track with the pacing guide. We will be having our final assessments next week on the World Conflicts (World War I, Great Depressions, and World War II). We also talked about formative and summative assessments and how we use them in our class. 3/17/11  Meetze, Smith, Yaman, Yarborough   We are finishing World War II and testing this week and working on the Holocaust, the formation of the United Nations and of Israel. We are on track with pacing. We are excited about the video next week and the connection to our study of the Holocaust. We will be discussing the video in class next week. We have made out our benchmark test. While looking at the calendar for the rest of the year, we should have about 2 weeks for PASS review. 3/24/11  Meetze, Smith, Yaman, Yarborough   We are entering the Cold War this week (standard 7-6). We are on track with pacing. We talked about the video discussion questions that the students completed on Tuesday. The students really enjoyed the video and did well on the questions. The video really did a great job giving the students a visual to what we have been talking about in class. We talked about and reviewed our benchmark test for Monday. We also discussed the criteria for recommending a student for Honors Social Studies for next year. We should be finished with the Cold War by the middle of April and moving into our final indicators/standard. 4/14/11  Meetze, Smith, Yaman, Yarborough   We are ending the conflicts in the Cold War this week and moving into the collapse of the Soviet Union next week. We are on track with pacing. We discussed our curriculum night tonight. Everything is ready for the game we are playing with the parents. We should finish everything with one week to review before PASS starts. 4/21/11  Meetze, Smith, Yaman, Yarborough   We are ending the Cold War this week and looking at the later indicators in standard 7-6 (Gandhi, nationalist movements in Africa, and the formation of Israel and their ongoing conflicts). We will be working on Standard 7-7 (the end of the Cold War, Apartheid,etc.) next week. We will get through all of our standards the week before testing begins and have a few full days to review before PASS. Sid had a good time at Barrier Islands. 5/19/2011  Meetze, Smith, Yaman, Yarborough   All standards were finished and we had a great review before PASS. This week we worked on the integrated unit and had the students plan a trip to another country. They seemed to really enjoy doing that. Next week we will be doing novel studies on specific topics related to our standards.